“What, Stanley, dear? Sprang what?” “This ghastly thing. This frightful news that she proposes to attend the dinner of the Pen and Ink Club on Friday night. I saw her talking to a pug-nosed female we met in the fruit, vegetable, birds, and pet dogs department, but I never guessed what they were talking about. She was inviting the old lady to that infernal dinner!” “But, Stanley, why shouldn’t Aunt Elizabeth go to the Pen and Ink Club dinner?” “Because my aunt is coming up to town on Friday specially to speak at that dinner, and your aunt is going to make a point of introducing herself and having a long chat about me.” We gazed at one another silently. There was no disguising the gravity of the news. Like the coming together of two uncongenial chemicals, this meeting of aunt with aunt must inevitably produce an explosion. And in that explosion would perish the hopes and dreams of two loving hearts. “Oh, Stanley! What can we do?” If the question had been directed at me, I should have been hard put to it to answer; but Ukridge, that man of resource, though he might be down, was never out. “There is just one scheme. It occurred to me as I was sprinting along the Brompton Road. Laddie,” he proceeded, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder, “it involves your co-operation.” “Oh, how splendid!” cried Millie. It was not quite the comment I would have made myself. She proceeded to explain. “Mr. Corcoran is so clever. I’m sure, if it’s anything that can be done, he will do it.” This ruled me out as a potential resister. Ukridge I might have been able to withstand, but so potently had this girl’s spell worked upon me that in her hands I was as wax. Ukridge sat down on the desk, and spoke with a tenseness befitting the occasion. “It’s rummy in this life, laddie,” he began in moralising vein, “how the rottenest times a fellow goes through may often do him a bit of good in the end. I don’t suppose I have ever enjoyed any period of my existence less than those months I spent at my aunt’s house in Wimbledon. But mark the sequel, old horse! It was while going through that ghastly experience that I gained a knowledge of her habits which is going to save us now. You remember Dora Mason?” “Who is Dora Mason?” enquired Millie, quickly. “A plain, elderly sort of female who used to be my aunt’s secretary,” replied Ukridge, with equal promptness. Personally, I remembered Miss Mason as a rather unusually pretty and attractive girl, but I felt that it would be injudicious to say so. I contented myself with making a mental note to the effect that Ukridge, whatever his drawbacks as a husband, had at any rate that ready tact which is so helpful in the home. “Miss Mason,” he proceeded, speaking, I thought, in a manner a shade more careful and measured, “used to talk to me about her job from time to time. I was sorry for the poor old thing, you understand, because hers was a grey life, and I made rather a point of trying to cheer her up now and then.”